By Shannon Boklaschuk
College of Arts & Science News
December 3, 2020

The first university course Dr. Martyn Clark (PhD) ever taught is memorable for many reasons.

First, Clark started teaching the University of Saskatchewan (USask) graduate geography course—GEOG 825—in September 2020, when most USask classes moved online due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. Second, because the course was offered remotely, students from more than a dozen countries around the world signed up. Third, Clark employed innovative teaching and learning practices in the course, including cloud computing, super-computing and hands-on model development.

As a result, teaching GEOG 825 involved a lot of “learning by doing,” said Clark, a professor in the Department of Geography and Planning in USask’s College of Arts and Science and the associate director of the Centre for Hydrology. “It’s been a pretty wild ride,” he said.

Read the full article here.

By Nick Skinner
Laurier Campus Magazine
Fall 2020

Nearly 4,000 km northwest of Wilfrid Laurier University’s southern Ontario campuses, where mainland Canada meets the Arctic Ocean, lies Trail Valley Creek Arctic Research Station. Located between Inuvik and Tuktoyaktuk, N.W.T., within the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, it is Laurier’s northern-most research station and this year marks its 30th anniversary.

Now the longest-running hydrologically focused Arctic research station in Canada, Trail Valley Creek has become a productive field site for Laurier’s Centre for Cold Regions and Water Science, which maintains more than 50 research sites north of Ontario’s Ring of Fire. It is also central to the university’s decade-long partnership with the Government of the Northwest Territories. Dedicated to understanding and predicting environmental changes near the treeline in the western Canadian Arctic, the research station is an interactive training ground for Laurier students and hosts international collaborators from organizations including NASA and the University of Edinburgh.

Read the full article here.